In silver halide color photographic light-sensitive materials, silver halide emulsions and so-called dye forming couplers (hereinafter merely referred to as couplers) capable of reacting with an oxidation product of an aromatic primary amine developing agent are often employed. In particular, a combination of a yellow coupler, a cyan coupler and a magenta coupler is usually employed in color photographic light-sensitive materials.
Of these, 5-pyrazolone type couplers widely used as magenta couplers have serious problems in color reproduction, since they show a side absorption around 430 nm and show a poor toe cut of absorption on the longer wavelength side.
In order to solve these problems, pyrazoloazole type magenta couplers have been developed. Magenta dyes obtained by coupling this type of coupler with an oxidation product of an aromatic primary amine developing agent do not have a side absorption around 430 nm as an ethyl acetate solution, and provide a very pure magenta color with a good toe cut of absorption on the longer wavelength side.
However, problems exist with these couplers in that the images formed on film or photographic printing paper by imagewise exposure and color developing light-sensitive materials which have silver halide emulsion layers containing these pyrazoloazole type magenta couplers dispersed therein using a high boiling organic solvent do not necessarily exhibit a good toe cut on the longer wavelength side in the reflection absorption spectrum. Further, these couplers fail to sufficiently improve color reproducibility, and possess only insufficient color image light fastness.